New Checkout Process

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

Am I missing something or is the new checkout process no shorter than before.

On my current site (assuming you are not shipping to a different delivery address) you have:

1. Select Country
2. Enter Address, Shipping Class, Promo Code + T&C Acceptance
3. Select Payment Method
4. PSP Bounce
5. Receipt

New Super Sexy Slimline Checkout:

1. Enter Address (Invoice & Delivery if different)
2. Select Shipping Class, Promo Code + T&C Acceptance
3. Select Payment Method
4. PSP Bounce
5. Receipt

Other than eliminating the delivery address separate page (which usually is not required for most customers), you seem to have removed the Shipping destination country selection page (yipee), but then split Page 2 into two pages instead of the original one for no obvious reason (boo).

Please tell me I have got this wrong and have overlooked something.

I thought the PSP bounce page was being eliminated but appears exactly the same as before.

EDIT: It appears that the PSP bounce page has been removed for many, although a bug seems to have failed to eliminate the PSP bounce page in my V10 Beta test site which was a clean install with an imported V9 snapshot. The bug has been raised on the V10 Beta site for further investigation.

[Chippy Minton]

Darren,

I was also bemused/confused by this so I am glad it is not just me! I installed the v10 beta and upgraded a snapshot before looking at the new checkout pages, only to find the same number of pages as before. I then uninstalled the beta and re-installed it to give the default site - just to check it was not my snapshot affecting the number of checkout pages, but no you are correct the same number of pages as before. Even if the customer did elect to ship to another address the delivery address appeared on the payment method page so it isn't even shorter here.


Actinic,

Why not put the Shipping Class, Promo Code + T&C Acceptance stuff on the same page as the Enter Address page? I know this may mean that the customer has to scroll down, but now you have added the hide the cart button the page would not be that long, and it would mean only two pages to the point of confirming the order.

[animal dreams]

Major Letdown

This is incredibly disappointing after the promises of streamlining the checkout.

OK the select country page has been removed but the checkout process is not any shorter! It is merely a juggling of the pieces of the jigsaw.

We do not offer different shipping classes so the only real function of page 2 is to accept the T&Cs!!! IMHO this is not going to "improve the shopper experince" as stated in the email I received this morning.

Come on Actinic - how long has it taken to market test this "improvement"???

[leehack]

Why not put the Shipping Class, Promo Code + T&C Acceptance stuff on the same page as the Enter Address page? I know this may mean that the customer has to scroll down, but now you have added the hide the cart button the page would not be that long, and it would mean only two pages to the point of confirming the order.

I'd imagine this is because the next button sends the current info in order to get the classes available shown, as the classes offered are relative to the products bought and the location they're going to. What you suggest might not be possible. The shipping classes can only be populated once location is known, so some inter page jiggery would need to occur.

[brucet]

I will look into the issue with the PSP bounce page because that certainly shouldn't appear. Which PSP were you using, and were you working with an upgraded v9 site or a fresh v10 one?

Just to clarify, the new checkout is not just about the number of pages, it's about achieving a better customer experience.

As you say, we have eliminated the initial country capture page and the separate address capture page (unless the shopper has Javascript disabled). The PSP bounce should also be gone - I will investigate that.

Those were the most commonly requested changes. Other common requests were to reorganise the data capture more logically, and make the page lengths more balanced. In response to that, we moved all the address capture to page one, and everything else to page two.

So our initial v10 design had two data-entry pages.

The third page was unavoidable for three reasons:
1) Pretty well every modern checkout has a final 'order confirmation' page where customers can review their order details before confirming it - including the price. This has come to be regarded as best practise.
2) Without relying on Javascript we cannot accurately show shipping and tax costs until the page after all the relevant information has been gathered. (Obviously it's an absolute requirement to show a final and accurate price before asking the customer to complete the order).
3) To eliminate the PSP bounce page, we also needed to relocate the function that sends the order information to the PSP; but that function also needs the complete price information for the order.

The obvious resolution was to use the same page for the order confirmation and the PSP forwarding. This actually makes the checkout one page shorter than it might have been. The alternative was to stuff everything onto the first page, making it very long with lots of scrolling, and have nothing but the payment confirmation on page two, which would be very unbalanced.

Obviously the receipt page is pretty much essential. You would not want to rely on email alone for delivering the receipt.

We did actually consult and thought very carefully about the design, and we also studied the checkouts of a number of highly thought-of ecommerce sites. Most of them had more pages than v10 does.

I hope this explanation is helpful

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

I'd imagine this is because the next button sends the current info in order to get the classes available shown, as the classes offered are relative to the products bought and the location they're going to.

I would assume this must be the reason, in which case removing the 'Select Country' page has not actually improved anthing because the second page has been split to create two pages and resulted in the same number of pages.

It was also stated previously that the PSP bounce page would be removed in the new streamline checkout but this doesn't seem to be the case, unless I have missed an option somewhere.

[leehack]

The only way you could get round that i guess is to have the pressing of the next buton initiate the class lookup and a hidden section (shipping options) appears on screen showing the options once done so. That would remove the need to move to another page to get the options, but brings up possible issues on data changes on screen. The movement to more logical processing was what i wanted plus the removal of the bounce (which has happened), so you get a 3 page checkout and a receipt page, 4 in total.

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

I will look into the issue with the PSP bounce page because that certainly shouldn't appear. Which PSP were you using, and were you working with an upgraded v9 site or a fresh v10 one?

It was a fresh install of V10 Beta, I then imported a V9 snapshot.
I have uploded the site in test mode to: www[dot]golfteewarehouse[dot]co [dot]uk/acatalog/test/.

The PSP is Actinic Payments.

I have attached a copy of the PSP bounce page I am referring to, I assume this is what you are calling a PSP bounce page, and displays for around 1 second.

Do you want me to raise this on the getsatisfaction V10 Beta site.

[animal dreams]

I understand that the shipping classes and tax could not be assessed before knowing the location, but I think there has been insufficient out of the box thinking before deciding on implementation.

Some people have waited years for Actinic to redesign the checkout. I have been using Actinic for 5+ years and it was an old wish list item when I was a newbie.

I empathise with you Bruce because I have been in your position (product manager), but I really believe this is a case of development doing the least they could to tick the box and justifying that everything else would be far to expensive/ time consuming.

There is no technical barrier to the checkout dynamically updating the information as the customer makes each selection. It happens on many sites I use for shopping. A total re-design of the checkout function was my expectation.

V10 was an opportunity to make significant improvement in what everyone recognises as an outdated checkout, but IMO it looks like window dressing.

I am extremely underwhelmed!

[brucet]

There is no technical barrier to the checkout dynamically updating the information as the customer makes each selection.

Unfortunately in our case there are both technical and business barriers. :-(

What you suggest cannot be done using Perl. We could have done it using Javascript, but then the checkout would fail for the 5% of shoppers who have it disabled, and all our customers would see an immediate 5% drop in sales.

The only other option would be to adopt a different technology altogether, such as PHP or ASP .Net. We are far from opposed to that as a long-term strategy, but trying to do it for the checkout in isolation from the rest of the product would create all kinds of problems.

[Mike Hughes]

Hi Bruce,

have you a demo site somewhere with the new checkout in operation?

I'd like to take a look and it could help Darren see if his experience is typical.

Mike

[pinbrook]

Do you want a "virgin" v10 with default checkout, mike? I can upload one if you want...

then we can test certain paramenters.

[Mike Hughes]

Yes. Just a virgin site with checkout. Ideally one that's known to work as intended, as then we'd know whether Darren's bounce page is typical or not.

Mike

[pinbrook]

what payment method can i use to force said bounce though? if its a vanilla site on a test domain i dont have a PSP to bounce too

[Darren B]

hmmmmmm

Apart from screwing my layout the new checkout page seems better but i cant say for sure as GC is not working for me and i have to recode the layouts to try and make sense of it.

so would be interested to see a virgin site on how its suppose to look.

As for all this best practice Actinic keep spouting, i have seen other reports on the internet that say otherwise - but its horses for courses i guess, so far im not impressed